Italian owner urges P&I Clubs to stop insuring older ships

“All the P&I clubs should stop covering old ships, let’s say ones aged more than 20 years”. This proposal emerged on Friday at the Shipping and the Law conference in Naples and came from Giuseppe D’Amato, chairman of Perseveranza di Navigazione shipping company. In order to reduce the current oversupply of tonnage, mainly in the dry bulk segment, the seasoned Italian shipowner asked all the P&I Clubs to coordinate for phasing out a large part of aged fleet at sea.

D’Amato highlighted that “at present the sea freight rates for bulk carriers are so low because of the Chinese shipwoners competition because they are buying and operating the old ships that in the past would have been scrapped. Chinese owners invest little money buying cheap ships and they employ low cost Chinese seafarers; that’s why they can go on working even with such a low market for sea freight rates.”

Federico Deodato, chairman of P&I broker company PL Ferrari, commented on this proposal saying: “Clubs are not allowed to cooperate at taking actions together on the matter”, while Ugo Salerno, ceo of RINA Group, added: “There are already political entities, such as IMO, in charge for regulating on these subjects.”